


every saviour needs her task

by skvadern



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Beholding-related addiction, Canon Divergence, Eye Trauma, Fix-It of Sorts, Friendship, Gen, Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23179507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: The bowing of his spine, stark through an oversized tee-shirt; the tears that glint in the hallway light. Jonathan Sims is still in there, and he’s fighting,hard.Jon needs to quit, and Basira needs to help.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Jonathan Sims, Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, background Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims - Relationship
Comments: 21
Kudos: 273





	1. before

**Author's Note:**

> this is the only fandom ive ever been in where gouging out someone's eyes counts as a fixit. also the research has Definitely put me on some sorta watchlist so i hope u all appreciate it  
> title from the courage or the fall by civil twilight, a very basira song

_She’s trapped in a place that is_ wrong _, everything she could possibly understand faded as if it had never been – had it ever? Maybe this was all the world had ever been, maybe this was all she had ever been-_

“Basira. B-Basira, please.”

She comes awake all at once, eyes straining against the semi-darkness of the Document Storage room. Daisy is the first thing she checks, but the warm weight curled into her side quickly reassures her. Once that’s dealt with, she moves on to her surroundings.

It’s easy enough to see what woke her. Jon is kneeling on the floor by the cot, illuminated by light spilling in from the hallway. He looks _awful_ , shaking like a leaf with his arms clasped tight round his waist, like he’s trying to hold himself together.

The first thing she can think to ask is “Are you hurt?”

“I –“ he starts, chokes, tries again; he forces the words out of his mouth like he’s vomiting stones. “There’s a woman sleeping in an alley, three minutes’ walk from the Institute. She’s got a statement. For me.” He winces at the last words, his gaze still fixed resolutely on the floor. Shame is thick and obvious on his face.

“And you didn’t go near her?” Basira’s heart kicks harder in her chest. They’d been so _careful_.

“God, no, I didn’t!” His voice rises for a second, then he cuts himself off with a guilty glance at Daisy. He needn’t worry, really. However light a sleeper Daisy used to be, these days she sleeps like the de- - she sleeps heavily enough that voices won’t wake her. “It woke me up, the call, the, the _need_ , a-and I came straight to you, I swear.”

“Okay,” Basira says, and forces her sleepy brain to think. Jon _wants_ that statement – she recognises that tension, so familiar from the years she’d spent working with the woman sleeping beside her. Recognises it from the boat. She can see the shape of the predator the Eye has made him.

But underneath that predator, there’s a person. The bowing of his spine, stark through an oversized tee-shirt; the tears that glint in the hallway light. Jonathan Sims is still in there, and he’s fighting, _hard_.

“Okay,” she repeats, swinging her legs over the side of the cot and into her shoes. “What do you need?”

Jon opens his mouth, closes it again. He starts rocking a little, and his teeth sink deep into his lip.

“Jon!” she hisses – she wants to touch him, but she’s pretty sure that would be a bad idea. She and Jon have similar sorts of touch aversion; she saw a lot of herself in him, once upon a time. Can still see it, when she lets herself think like that. “Jon, this is urgent. I need you to focus right now, can you do that?”

That’s a trick she learned on probation, asking a question when you need someone to concentrate on what you’re saying. It works this time, just about. “Yes,” Jon manages, wetting his lips. “O-Of course, sorry. I – sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” she tells him, “just talk to me. Tell me what you need me to do.”

He finally looks up, eyes meeting hers. Behind the dark iris, in the pit of his pupils, she can see flickers of eerie ghost-light. “I think I need. I need to quit.”

It takes a moment for his words to sink in. When they do, all she manages to say is “Fuck.”

Jon chokes out a laugh. “Yes, quite.”

“Are you sure?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Jon hisses, bobbing his head frantically. “Yes, I’m, I’m certain. It is taking a _tremendous_ amount of effort to do anything that’s not, not running to that alley and _ripping_ that poor woman’s worst experience out of her. I don’t know how much longer I can h-hold back, and I’m not. Not inclined to, to test it.”

“We could restrain you,” Basira counters, mind whirling in a desperate search for alternatives. “You’re not that much stronger these days, not physically – it wouldn’t be hard.”

Another harsh laugh. “And then, what, you keep me tied to a chair for the rest of my life? Post guards, set up a, a rota? You can’t watch me forever, and this has already gone. Too far.” He hangs his head. “I. I let it get too far. No more. No more statements. Victims. No more.”

“We don’t know what quitting will do to you,” she argues. “Eric Delano was just an assistant – you’re an actual avatar, and the Beholding brought you back from the dead. For all we know, removing your connection to it will kill you.”

“Wha-What, you’re worried about losing your most valuable resource?” Jon almost snarls, tendons tight on his neck as he strains in place. “I’d think even, even _you_ can see the benefits of r-removing another monster from the world.”

“Fuck, Jon, maybe I just don’t want to murder you! Is that so hard to believe?”

Jon blinks at her, and it’s _hard_ to contain the rush of anger at just how surprised he looks. “You said. You said you would,” he replies, accuses almost, and suddenly Basira realises he’d been _counting_ on that promise. One final restraint to keep him on the wagon.

The leaden weight of exhaustion crashes down on her. So many people counting on her for so many things – including, apparently, to literally murder them. When the fuck did her life devolve so completely? “I don’t know,” she admits, sagging back against Daisy’s warmth behind her. “You know I’ve never actually killed anyone, right? Shot a few things, but I’ve never killed anyone. I meant what I said, when I said it but I… I don’t know if I could go through with it.”

Jon sags, nodding slowly. “Fair. Fair enough.” He flashes her a strained smile. “Do you think you’ll be able to g-go through with this, though?”

Basira’s immediate gut reaction is _no. Fuck no. Find someone else, anyone else. I don’t want to do this._ Of course it is, she’s only human, and she’d liked Jon, once upon a time. Before her life became a nightmare, and her potential friend became one of the things she’s meant to protect people from. Fuck knows, she’s been furious at him, suspicious of him; Jon is a monster, she can’t forget that, no matter how tame he seems. But she doesn’t want to _mutilate_ him.

Behind her, Daisy shifts, pushes herself up. “Basira?” she asks, then “Jon?”

“It’s, it’s okay, Daisy,” Jon says, since Basira has apparently managed to lose her voice. “It’s going to be. Okay.”

Daisy takes one look to put the pieces together. “You’re feeling it, aren’t you? The blood.”

“In a, a manner of speaking. Yes.” Daisy sticks out a hand and Jon shuffles forward on his knees, taking it in his and pressing his forehead to it. His body wracks itself with shivers.

“Daisy?” he asks, his voice gone high like a trapped deer screaming. “Will you.” He stops, swallows. “Will you do it? Take my, my eyes. Please.”

Daisy is quiet for a moment, but even before she speaks, Basira knows she’s going to refuse. “I can’t hurt anyone, Jon, not even like this. Can’t trust that it’ll stop there.”

“Of, of course,” Jon agrees, and his smile is cracked and ghoulish, horrifying. “There’ll be blood, a-after all.”

In the face of that horrible, broken expression, Basira finds her voice again. “I’ll do it.”

Jon’s face splits, crumbling in naked gratitude, and Basira forces herself not to cry.

~~~~~

Daisy is going to be guarding the corridor. They’ve all agreed that putting her in the same room as a bloody mutilation wouldn’t be safe – besides, Basira doesn’t trust that Elias won’t try something. There’s no way he’s missed this. They’d do the – surgery? – in the tunnels, but they don’t have a bright enough battery-powered light to do it safely.

Jon and Daisy hug before she steps outside, hard and fierce. When it breaks, Jon takes Daisy’s face in his hands and stares at her for a long minute, before gently pushing her away.

“You sure?” she asks, husky voice tender in a way Basira has only heard directed at Jon, and at her. Jon nods, face set and resolute, and Daisy presses a hard kiss to his forehead before turning to Basira.

“’M sorry,” she murmurs, and Basira shakes her head.

“Don’t be. I’ve got this.”

That gets her one of Daisy’s beautiful wry smiles, the ones that used to piss her off because she’d mistaken them for condescension. “Course you do.” She hesitates, then hugs her tightly.

Basira lets her head fall to rest in the warm darkness of Daisy’s neck for a moment, breathing in deeply. Daisy might smell different these days, different in some deep undefinable way, but Basira thinks she’s becoming more familiar with how she smells now. She’s starting to like it more and more.

She kisses Daisy’s neck, soft and feather-light, before pulling away. Every part of her screams not to, but she’s not going to let herself start shirking her duty now. Daisy eyes her carefully, then slips out with a quick squeeze of Jon’s arm.

Jon looks after her with wide eyes, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. For a second, she thinks he’s going to bolt.

“Jon?” she calls, and his head snaps round to her. He stares blankly for a moment, then takes a deep breath and forces his shoulders down.

“I’m ready.”

Basira has never quite been able to call herself brave. Plenty of other people have, but she’s always felt that bravery took fear, and the truth is that at the points in her life where she’s needed to step up, the fear is easy to ignore, to put away. Afterwards, she’ll shake and cry and her heart will pound itself out of her chest, but right now Basira’s hands are steady, and her mind is clear.

She knows what she needs to do.

They’ve cleared the cot, laid down clean towels. Jon lies down and nestles his head onto them, squinting against the glare of the lamp Basira had borrowed – this is one thing she does not want to do in poor lighting. Basira wipes down the grapefruit spoon, the one they’d bought with Institute funds after Jon found Eric Delano’s statement, one last time. When she slides a couple of scalpels out of the sterile packaging, the metal glints coldly, and her stomach lurches.

“Having second thoughts?” Jon asks tentatively. “I can do it myself, if you need.”

To her shame, Basira almost considers it. “No,” she says at last. “I can do a cleaner job than you can, especially if you want to go the whole way and do enucleation.”

Jon nods. “I think that’s. That’s my best option, yes.”

“There we go, then.” Basira carefully climbs onto the cot, straddling Jon and perching on his hips. It’s _weird_ to be this close to him, to feel his too-steady breaths move her body, but it’s not actually bad. Apparently, however confused her brain might be about Jon, her body’s marked him down as friendly, allowed.

No point delaying any longer. She grabs a pair of nitrile gloves out of their ridiculously well-stocked first aid kit, snapping them on, and picks up the grapefruit spoon.

Jon trembles when she takes his chin in a steadying hand, holding his head in place. But he doesn’t try to pull away. His skin is warm beneath her palm, stubble and scar tissue, bone solid beneath it.

He feels so human, laid out beneath her like this, terrified and trusting. For a mad second, she’s overwhelmed by more affection than she’d ever thought she was capable of feeling for this strange, scarred half-monster.

“Sorry I’m the last thing you’re seeing,” she says, and immediately regrets it. What the fuck kind of thing is that to say to someone?

Jon just smiles, soft and sad. “I can. Think of worse last sights than someone who cares enough to mutilate me at my request.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she mutters, and he chuckles, before a wave of tension runs through him. One of his hands flies to grip her wrist, tight enough to hurt.

“Basira,” he hisses, voice strangled, “you need to do it _now_.”

She doesn’t know whether he’s been hit by another wave of craving, if he’s sensed an attack, if the Beholding is moving to defend its property. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except doing what needs to be done.


	2. after

Jon is probably going to be sectioned. They’d agreed beforehand to say that he’d mutilated himself, and the doctor who saw him in A&E knew too little about the Magnus Institute to be put off by Basira’s name-drop. They’re going to get a full panel of people in to do the assessment, but Basira’s pretty sure unless one of the panel knows what the Magnus Institute means, Jon’s going to end up in the nearest psych ward.

Still, that’s not going to be done today, with Jon sunk deep into exhausted, drugged sleep. She’ll deal with that later.

Even hours later, Basira wants to cry. Her throat is too tight, and she keeps having to clear it, drinking way too much tea to try and wash down the shaky tension in every limb. The caffeine isn’t having its normal, calming effect, but she supposes there’s only so much tea can fix.

There’s only so much soap can fix, too. She’s washed her hands so many times her skin feels alien, rough and cracked. The soap stings now when she swipes it over her knuckles. It doesn’t matter how many times she tries to remind herself that she was wearing gloves the whole time – she can still feel the warm slickness of Jon’s blood, an after-feeling that sets her skin crawling.

Daisy follows her into the bathroom the next time she visits. After a few seconds of frantic hand-washing she steps in, grabbing Basira’s arms and holding her close. Basira considers struggling – she could probably get loose, even – but then Daisy murmurs “Basira,” in her ear, in that soft hoarse voice that she’s so weak for.

She sags in Daisy’s arms, and lets herself be guided back into the hospital corridor and towards Jon’s bed.

Jon looks ridiculously tiny, the strange eldritch energy he’s been putting out since he woke from his coma absent. Without it, she can really focus on him, the scars and wrinkles carved deep into skin gone sallow. He’s somehow managed to lose even more weight.

“He looks like shit,” she murmurs without thinking.

Daisy hums. “Yeah. But he smells better.”

“What, antiseptic and blood?”

“Human. He smells human again.” Daisy reaches over and takes Basira’s hand, callouses rough against her skin. “Because of you.”

Basira tries to breath, but it keeps getting stuck in her swollen, aching throat. “I should call Melanie and Georgie, let them know. Keep an eye on him?”

“Sure,” Daisy agrees easily, tugging her chair round to get a better field of view round the ward. They’ve always been good at giving each other space.

That thought makes Basira suddenly furious with herself, with Daisy. What good has _space_ ever done either of them? She’s under no illusions that this has fixed everything – she and Daisy are still tied to the Institute, and this transgression isn’t one Elias will forgive. They’ve removed one threat, but more will take its place, and soon.

Maybe there’s still time, before something finally gets them. Time to live a little.

She leaves the hospital to make the call; best not to let anyone overhear, the doctor who examined and treated Jon was already suspicious enough. Being out in the open, or at least what passes for open outside UCH, makes her back itch and her fingers ache for her gun. How long has it been, since she spent any time outside the Institute that wasn’t a mission? When did this paranoia take her, this constant itch of eyes digging into her back?

Well, it’s not paranoia, not really. They’re actually out to get her.

Melanie picks up on the third ring. “What’s wrong?” she asks immediately – which, fair enough.

“Jon quit,” she says, figuring that it’s best to be direct.

Melanie is silent for a moment, then she says “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Basira replies

“And you didn’t find, you know, another way…” Melanie fumbles.

“Nope.” Her voice sounds _wrong_ , buoyed by sick cheer. “He’s down two eyeballs.”

“Jesus, Basira!”

“I should know,” she continues wildly. “I was the one who cut them out.”

“What –“ Melanie splutters for a second. “Why the hell couldn’t he do that himself? I managed it!”

“We figured enucleation was safer than, you know, just scrambling them. You’ve seen how he can heal. Could heal.”

The deep sigh Melanie lets out sends static sputtering into Basira’s ear. She flinches. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I didn’t mean that. Not really, I just… Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

Another sigh. “How is he, is he okay?”

“We think so,” Basira replies. “It was touch and go for a bit – his heart stopped just as the ambulance got there, they had to restart it a couple of times before it took. But the doctors say he’s stable now. He’s sleeping, looks absolutely shattered.”

“But it worked?” Melanie demands.

“As near as we can tell. Daisy says he smells human again, and you know that weird feeling you’d always get around him? That’s gone.”

“Oh.” Melanie’s silent for a second, letting it sink in. Then she murmurs, “Oh shit. Thank God.”

“Is Georgie there?” Basira asks.

“Yeah,” Melanie says absently, then, “yeah! I’ll go get her.” She puts the phone on speaker and Basira can hear the rustle of her movement, her calling out to Georgie. She leans against the brick wall behind her, lets herself sink to the ground. A passer-by gives her an odd look, but it’s Central London – nobody stares very long.

“What’s up?” Georgie asks cheerfully.

“Basira just called,” Melanie tells her, tripping over her words. “Jon quit! Like, actually, for real quit.”

“Shit!” Georgie burst out, and Basira has to shove her arm over her mouth to mask her slightly hysterical giggle. What the hell is wrong with her? “Is he okay?”

“Apparently he’s stable, but it was bad for a while.”

“Where is he?”

“I – Basira?” Melanie asks, and Basira forces herself to respond.

“We’re at UCH – me and Daisy, that is. And Jon. Obviously.” She bites her lip hard to shut herself up.

“Okay, okay, I’m- Melanie, are we…” Georgie trails off, but Basira can already hear Melanie moving.

“We might as well, right? If he’s out for good. Besides, sounds like you need some support, Basira.”

Hearing her name jolts Basira out of her stupor. She nods, and immediately feels stupid for nodding. “Yeah, no, do come.” _Please_ almost slips out, but she bites it back viciously. “Jon will want to see you.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, before Basira realises what she’s just said. “Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Melanie says – gently? When has Melanie ever been gentle? “You better believe I’m going in hard with the blind jokes, and Jon better keep up with me.”

“I’m sure he’ll manage,” Georgie replies, and then, “see you soon, okay, Basira?”

Basira takes a deep breath and lets it out, making sure to tilt her head away from the receiver when she does. “Sure. See you soon.” She hangs up before Melanie does.

It takes her a moment to work out how to stand up again, but she figures it out eventually.

When she gets back to the hospital room, there’s someone sitting in a new chair, on the opposite side of the bed from Daisy. For a second Basira doesn’t recognise him, and she reaches for a gun that’s definitely not there, before her brain puts the pieces together.

“Martin?!”

Martin Blackwood looks up from where his gaze had been fixed on Jon’s grey, bandaged face, and tries a smile. It’s terrible, more like a grimace. Nothing like the sweet smiles she’d seen him pull occasionally, before everything in his life went to hell. Maybe he’s fallen out of practice.

“Hi, Basira,” he says softly. “Sorry to bother, but I thought I’d better come.”

Basira darts a glance at Daisy, who looks back at her levelly. “Did you text him our location?” she asks, and Daisy blinks at her for a second, before nodding.

“Seemed like the thing to do,” she says. “Since he saved our arses and that.”

“He what?” Basira asks, directing the question at both of them. She sinks into the chair beside Daisy – evidently her partner doesn’t think this man is a threat, and Basira is frankly too fucking tired to stand right now without adrenaline propping her up.

Daisy shifts. “The Lonely,” she says. “I could feel it, in the corridor. Just before you did it. That cold fog, curling down towards us. If I had to guess, Lukas was under some sort of orders from Elias to try and stop you getting Jon out the way.”

“He was,” Martin put in. His voice has a weird, distant quality, and his eyes have fallen squarely back on Jon’s face. “Elias called him just before it happened – we were together, in his office. He told me he’d just be a moment, had to deal with something, but I could hear enough of what Elias said down the phone to get the gist of it.” He shrugs. “I followed him down to the Archives. Honestly, I didn’t really know what I was going to do, but there’s that antique lamp on that weird little side table, at the entrance to the Archives? Yeah, I bashed his head in with that.”

Basira blinks, struck by just how calm Martin sounds. He could be discussing the weather, or his workload – definitely not assaulting and possibly murdering his boss.

“Is he dead?” she asks quickly.

“I don’t know,” Martin replies calmly, still so far away. “I chucked his body in the Lonely – maybe that’ll heal him, or maybe he’ll stay there and the fog will eat him to bones. I really don’t know.”

“Why?” Daisy asks. “Whatever plan you had with Lukas, it’s not gonna work now.”

“No, it’s not. But that’s okay.” Jon shifts in the bed, and Martin’s hand twitches – like he wants to reach out, smooth Jon’s furrowed brow. “He came to me, you know. When he found Eric Delano’s tape, I was the first person he told.”

“Really.” Basira isn’t one bit surprised – Jon’s been insane over his lost assistant since he woke up.

“Yeah. He wanted us to do it with me. To leave together, run away together and be free.” Martin chuckles at that, and it’s an ugly sound. “I told him no. That he didn’t really want to do that, that he’d only come to me so I could talk him out of it. More fool me, I guess.”

Basira really has no idea what to say to that – thankfully, Daisy beats her there. “I’m sorry, Martin.”

Martin shrugs easily, but she can see the shadows behind his eyes. “Yeah, well. I couldn’t let Peter stop him. Not when he was finally going to get out of this.” Another bitter little laugh. “You know, it’s funny. All this time I was trying to save Jon from himself, and he managed it without any help at all from me.”

“Jon didn’t save himself,” Daisy says, and there’s that certainty, solid like granite in her voice. “He reached out to us, and we saved him. Basira saved him.”

Basira ducks her head at that. Her eyes burn with salt that she keeps having to swallow down. She’s holding back the tide here, in this shitty hospital chair.

“Fair,” Martin says.

Basira wants to press him on what state he’d left Peter Lukas in, on whether they could all be covered in fog in the next few minutes. On what the hell he and Lukas were doing before Martin brained him. But she doesn’t. As embarrassing as it is, she’s not sure she’s strong enough to hear his answer.

They sink into a sort of silence, cut through by the chatter and noise of the ward around them. Basira finds herself following a nurse with her eyes, tired eyes and warm smile. The woman’s hijab has the same pattern as Samira’s favourite scarf, and Basira realises she can’t remember the last time she heard her sister’s voice.

All these people around them – how many of them are touched by the nightmares that have come to define Basira’s life? How many aren’t?

She’d been one of them, once, before she’d joined the force, a normal person. A string of boring jobs, good A Levels and no desire to get a degree when she could throw herself into work; she’d joined the Met buoyed up by idealism, ideas of changing the system from the inside. Heart filled with ideals of justice, truth, morality. Basira tries to imagine what that her would have done, if a monster knelt before her and asked her to carve out his eyes, and she can’t. She can’t even begin to picture it.

She feels decades older than that Basira.

Daisy is holding her hand, she realises, the knowledge trickling down from far away. It’s good. Grounding. She grips the offered hand tighter, and Daisy squeezes back just as hard, and they hold it until the little muscles in Basira’s hand and wrist ache.

In her trance, Basira finds herself staring at Martin. He looks… bad. Washed out, somehow, all his colour drained. He looks up to meet her eyes, and they hold that stare for much longer than Basira thinks she’s ever looked at anyone before. The minutes tick by, and Martin’s eyes are fogged and achingly sad. She wonders what he sees in her eyes – she doubts it’s anything good.

Their gaze only breaks when Georgie and Melanie arrive. How they got in, Basira has no idea – she’s pretty sure there’s a visitor limit – but Melanie can be incredibly sneaky when she puts her mind to it, and Georgie’s never struck her as someone who’d take shit from anyone.

Georgie takes one look at Jon, and spins right back around. She reaches for Melanie, and Melanie obligingly curls her arms around her girlfriend, tucking Georgie’s head into her shoulder.

“How’s he look?” she asks the room at large. “Also, who’s here?”

“It’s me, Basira, and Martin,” Daisy answers. “And he looks like shit, but living shit at least.”

Melanie nods. “Living shit is something, yeah. Hi, everyone.”

“Hi,” Basira choruses with the others. Her voice feels weird in her throat – she remembers that feeling, from fumbling through interview questions after the Unknowing, with a selection of increasingly apathetic cops. She’d thought at the time it was a remnant of the Stranger magic, but maybe it was just dissociation.

Funny, she’d never though to apply that term to herself. It kind of fits, though.

Georgie finally pulls herself away from Melanie, turning around with a deep breath. She presses a fist to her lips when she looks at Jon again, but from this angle Basira can see the teary smile tugging at her lips.

“Good on you, Jon,” she says softly. “Good on you.”

She doesn’t manage anything else. Martin gives up his chair for her, and she sinks into it so suddenly it squeaks on the linoleum.

Martin catches Basira’s eye, tilts his head to the side, and Basira hauls herself out of her chair. Letting go of Daisy’s hand is the hardest bit, and as she follows Martin away from Jon’s bed, she finds herself squeezing her freed hand tight, relishing the stiffness, the pain. And why not, she thinks. Unlike so many pains in her life, this one comes from love.

“Listen,” Martin says, when they’re tucked out of the way of the nurses, “when we’re back in business – I’ve got things to share. The Extinction, all of that. I think we should team up on this.”

Basira raises an eyebrow. It’s harder than it should be. “Not going to try and go it Alone anymore?”

Martin looks down, scuffing his foot on the marked-up floor. “The Lonely would’ve suited me, I think. Would have. But I’m not sure I can go back, not now. I’m not… disconnected enough, anymore.”

“Or at least,” Basira replies, “you can’t lie to yourself that you are anymore.”

She gets a sharp look for that, but it softens quickly. “Sure. That.” He’s quiet for a moment, arms curved round himself in a sort of parody of a hug. Then he shakes himself. “What I was doing with Peter, all the information I collected. The whole thing. Do you want to help?”

She doesn’t, is the thing. Basira is as tired as she can ever remember being, tired like three connecting flights to reach nothing but dead ends; tired like stumbling away from a burning waxwork museum and waiting, numb and broken down to frayed ends of herself, for the emergency crew to get to her. She wants to sit still forever, until her body solidifies into marble and there’s nothing left of her to break.

But she isn’t allowed to do that. She has to fight, to change _something,_ because however fucked up her life is right now, it’s still _her life_. She could give up, that’s always a possibility, but she already knows she’s not going to.

“Sure,” she says. “But later, okay.”

Martin nods. “Later, definitely.” This time, his wry little smile actually does look like a smile. “God knows we all need a break.”

Basira considers arguing, but he’s right.

When they walk back over and re-join the others, Basira doesn’t bother sitting down again. Instead, she stands behind Daisy and loops her arms around her partner’s neck, lets herself rest her weight against Daisy’s shoulders. They’re not as solid as they used to be, maybe, but Basira can still stick her nose in Daisy’s hair and it’s still safety. It’s still the closest thing to home she’s got anymore.

“You good?” Daisy murmurs, and it rumbles in Basira’s chest. She sighs happily into Daisy’s Daisy-smelling hair.

“I will be,” she replies. She has no idea if it’s true or not, but it’s what she’s going with.

**Author's Note:**

> idk whether its come through anywhere or not, but i hc jon as autistic and basira as adhd. im also Very attached to the friendships all these fucked-up people could have had if jonny sims wasn't writing a cosmic horror tragedy with them, and i fully intend to make those friendships happen come hell or series finale


End file.
